Description
Together with my colleague Emanuela Corti (XJTLU), I coordinated and led the Cumulus Working Group FINDER (Future of Industrial Design Education and Research) workshop. Cumulus Working Groups are communities of practice created by and for Cumulus members to share expertise and engage on a diversity of topics that matter to our disciplines.The 2026 session focused on two themes, identified through a previously conducted survey: More-than-human Design and Systems Design. Participants engaged in a 60-minute group activity to design missing curriculum modules, followed by 45 minutes of discussion and presentations. We invited the following international experts in the respective themes to support the group activity and discussions:
System Design
•Miaosen Gong (Jiangnan University, China) – Associate Professor, DESIS Lab director, 15+ years in strategic design for sustainability & social innovation.
•Aylin Kayser (Germany) – Practitioner and Part-time educator, transformation designer working at the intersection of space, culture & systems thinking.
More-than-human Design
•Enza Migliore (SUSTech, China) – Assistant Professor, design researcher exploring eco-intelligence, bio-innovation & more-than-human interactions.
•Liliana Del Villar Arias (EDINBA, Mexico) – Professor, sustainability policy specialist integrating design, environmental law & biodiversity.
The workshop received 12 registrations and produced tangible, open-source outputs that will be digitized and shared with all participants. The Department of Industrial Design at XJTLU was proud to lead this international initiative, which was launched in 2022 at the Cumulus Detroit conference (online) under the co-leadership of Massimo Imparato and Mariia Zolotova.
| Period | 7 May 2026 |
|---|---|
| Event type | Workshop |
| Location | Athens, GreeceShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |